I always felt completely confident - it's like in a feature film, knowing your principle character is extremely well-cast. I had that same confidence in Clive [Oppenheimer].

I'm reminded of an interview Larry King had on his talk show with one of Michael Jackson's sisters. He's talking about how many millions she made on her latest record, and all of a sudden, she looks at him tearfully and says, "Larry, you know, I'm not interested in money or sales or songs. I'm a spiritual person." And I thought, "Oh my god..."

Strangely enough, there's this mythology sprouting out that I cannot stop.

I'm very, very curious about how people live under the volcano, how they handle the permanence of danger.

I had complete freedom. They [Netflix] knew roughly what I was doing.

We were very, very lucky [with Tim White filmed making historic discoveries in the East African Rift ] . In 100 years, only three skeletal remains [of early man] were ever found at this site. This was the third one, and we were right there when it happened. In fact, when I first heard they had found something, I said, "Please stop it! Don't do anything right now. Let's do it tomorrow until we have unpacked our cameras and assembled our stuff.

I think I would be a good villain in a James Bond movie. They were fairly weak, the last half-dozen of villains in James Bond movies were not that convincing.